The present invention relates to a system for effecting in succession the transportation on a road vehicle a container which has received a granular, pulverulent or liquid product at a filling station, the placing in a fixed installation of a full container for use, after the departure of the vehicle, as storage means, for example as a silo or cistern, and, after the placing of the full container, the taking of an empty container located at another site by means of the vehicle for bringing it to the filling station.
Many arrangements have been proposed for solving this problem but all have drawbacks. In French Pat. No. 2,240,883 (Poirier), the container is held, in the course of pivoting, in a cradle mounted on the fixed equipment to pivot about an axis which is on principle coincident with the pivot, the pivot pin connecting the container to the vehicle. Bearing in mind that this pin is longitudinally offset with respect to the point of the rear part of the vehicle which is exactly positioned vertically and laterally, it is in practice impossible -- owing in particular to the variations in height that may be undergone by the coupling bolster normally provided in the front of the vehicle (which is most often constituted by a semi-trailer) for its coupling to a tractor -- to achieve coincidence between the axis of the articulation of the moving cradle and pivot axis of the articulation of the container on the vehicle. Moreover, the final position of the container on the fixed installation is vertical, which requires the use of auxiliary jacks during the final stage for placing the container on the fixed installation, for braking the descending movement.
Moreover, there is known from British Pat. No. 704,550 (Devis) a handling device for unloading a silo from a vehicle and putting it in an inclined position of use, but this device only lends itself to the treatment of cylindrical silos of small dimensions and in any case cannot be employed for handling heavy rectangular-sided containers such as those widely employed at the present time.